There's hope for 32MB cards!

[Guest]

Well, I decided to bite the bullet and spend a bit of time tweaking Fly! II to get better frame rates, and boy did it pay off. Using a number of posts I read on these forums, I was able to get my framerates up around 20 frames per second on detailed scenery! I've been flying quite a bit in a Denver area scenery I downloaded here that includes a very detailed KAPA (Centennial Airport) and tons of buildings in the city. I never thought I'd achieve 20 fps in this detailed scenery using my GeForce2 GTS 32MB. These are my specs:Pentium 4 1.4 GhzGeForce2 GTS 32MB512MB RAMWindowsXP ProfessionalnVidia Denotator Drivers (v28.32)FSAA: 2xHere are the steps I took:1) Ensure my AGP memory allocation is set to 64MB2) Turn of vertical sync in graphic card settings3) Set the following settings in Fly.ini: popBuildingsIntoView=1 popBuildingsTolerance=204) Use memcalc (available in the file library) to determine where I had over/under allocated memory slots5) After doing some trial and error, I arrived at the following render.ini settings: [Textures] maxTextures32=8 maxTextures32_565=8 maxTextures64=16 maxTextures64_565=16 maxTextures128=65 maxTextures128_565=75 maxTextures256=35 maxTextures256_565=40 maxTextures512=8 maxTextures512_565=0 maxTextures1024=1 maxTextures1024_565=0 mipMapFlag=8966) I also turned on environmental lighting in fly.ini for some improved lighting effects.I hope my experiences help anyone else using a slightly older video card. I never expected to get such good results. I'd also like to thank the many people who post tips to these forums. I now have Fly! II looking beautiful after the following improvements:* New sky using Ivan's Sky3* New clouds using Jure's fantastic clouds* Realistic water using the VFR water animations and adjustments to fly.ini:waterTransparency=200waterTilingDensity=2* ROTW TBM 700What more could I ask for? I'm a software developer by trade so this stuff wasn't too difficult. It is too bad that it takes quite a bit of knowledge to optimize Fly! II, but I'll take it if I get the results I have now. Besides, its the Fly! II community that helps each other out, right?Thanks everyone,Dan Larson

[dkohl 0]

Can I suggest an experiment...Download Scott's TM sceneries for the NYC area. I think there are five files-- Scott's NYC-- Scott's LI-- Scott's NY-- Scott's JFK-- Scott's LGAFollow instructions in each of the readme's. Once you've done all that, your NYC area will look like mine. I have a GF4 Ti4600 and am getting rates in the low teens trying to land at LGA. My settings for FLY.ini are similar to yours, but my RENDER.ini is quite different due to having 128MB of video memory on the Ti4600. I'd be interested to see your performance with your 32MB card vs. my performance on a card with several times that in memory.By the way -- the detail in his TM scenery is awesome so if you can get working, it'll greatly improve the visual reality of the NYC area.I'll keep tabs on this thread. -DK----Fly! II v230Dell 8200 P4/1.8G, 512MB RAM, Nvidia GF4 Ti4600 v28.83, WinXP Home Edition.CH Pro Pedals and Yoke USB.

[Guest]

Well, I took your challenge and installed all 5 of Scott's scenery packs. These are scenery downloads that I have stayed away from figuring that I had no chance at getting acceptable frame rates. Well, I'm proud to say that I was able to get upwards of 20 fps in the most detailed areas of NYC. Now a lot of that may have to do with my Fly.ini settings that hide certain buildings until I get to a certain distance and then they appear. This seems to give me much better performance on the ground at airports. I love that feature because I really only care about seeing all of the airport buildings as I'm rolling by on the taxiway.I'm sure that upgrading my video card would allow me to increase the quality of my view. In other words, I could use high-detail textures, increase visibility and perhaps use building shadows (right now I'm only using aircraft shadows). But in the meantime, I guess I won't have to run out to the store just yet. That'll make my wife breathe a sigh of relief.Here is my proof:http://home.earthlink.net/~finsdad/FlyII/p...es/NYC_fps1.jpghttp://home.earthlink.net/~finsdad/FlyII/p...es/NYC_fps2.jpgDan LarsonKAPA

[Guest captbulldog]

Denver scenery! I remember that one!Preston

[Guest]

Dan,Just one question : Do you have enabled any shadows ?Ludovic

[JimD737 0]

"Here are the steps I took:1) Ensure my AGP memory allocation is set to 64MB"Is that set up in your BIOS or software somewhere?Thanks!

[Guest]

The AGP memory allocation is in the BIOS. I've read many discussions regarding this setting. Some say that it should be set to 1/2 your system memory. I read somewhere that you should first try it at 64...and that worked for me! I found the 64MB setting to be adequate even though I have 512MB of RAM.As far as shadows...I'm using aircraft shadows but *not* building shadows. Its all tradeoffs, I guess, but I'm finding my current setting give me the perfect mix of realism and performance.Dan

[dkohl 0]

Dan:Please post your FLY.ini and RENDER.ini file where you got 20+ FPS in the NYC area. I'd like to compare your files to mine since I get less than that on the final approach into LGA RWY 22 (usually in the low to mid teens). Also, are you using TM128 or TM256 texture pods?On the posts, while I'm using a much more powerful card than you (and so I am using high detail textures), I'd like to see what other settings we have differently so as to compare and try to get mine to perform better.One other note - I just upgraded to the Ti4600. I pulled out my GeForce3 Ti200 (64mb card) and its packed in a box. If you're interested, I'm thinking of selling it. Send a note if you are along with an offer. I was going to post it to eBay but would be happy to save the hassle factor and just send it to you.Looking forward to a post of the two files I requested above. Ohh... and I hope you like Scott's NYC scenery. I think its terrific.-DK----Fly! II v230Dell 8200 P4/1.8G, 512MB RAM, Nvidia GF4 Ti4600 v28.83, WinXP Home Edition.CH Pro Pedals and Yoke USB.